


Put Words in My Mouth

by goodoldfashioned



Category: RedLetterMedia RPF
Genre: Aging, Banter, Bars and Pubs, Dirty Talk, Drinking, Feelings Realization, First Time, Holidays, M/M, Mistaken for Being in a Relationship, Semi-Public Sex, Soulmates, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:40:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21725401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodoldfashioned/pseuds/goodoldfashioned
Summary: Mike and Jay get mistaken for a couple and start joking around about what that would be like, until they’re not joking anymore.
Relationships: Mike/Jay
Comments: 18
Kudos: 111





	Put Words in My Mouth

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write something wintery/holiday-ish & cozy, so here it is! Hoped to capture that feeling of being huddled up in a bar at night around Christmastime when it's cold outside, there's something kind of magical about it to me, lol.
> 
> This is about the Half in the Baaaaaag characters and their world only. 
> 
> **

Mike had a tendency to put off work for as long as possible, to the point that it became much harder work for the amount of time he’d waited to do it. He was forty years old and had no interest in changing this or other bad habits. He just accepted it and annually braced himself for the end of the year crunch when everyone seemed to cash their chips in on him at once and the mountain of VCR repair work he’d shoved into the corner of the shop wasn’t far away in the distance anymore. Suddenly, every year, it was right at his fucking feet.

Jay enabled him in this and all things. He seemed to need Mike’s dysfunction in his life in order to forgive his own. This made him a useful servant, and he often did more than his share of their end-of-year work while Mike supervised and brought him beers.

Mike would have kept Jay around regardless, because in four decades on this miserable planet Jay was the only person Mike had ever found whose voice he didn’t hate. The things he said with it were also okay, mostly. Sometimes Jay would enthuse about the dumbest shit with the utmost sincerity, and Mike would recoil as if struck, personally insulted that Jay, the one person in the entire world Mike secretly admired, could be taken in by things he should have known were beneath him. Jay was a good sport about Mike’s perhaps equivalent interests, so Mike would just sigh or tell him to shut up and add another asterisk to his nevertheless enduring belief that Jay had valuable opinions. 

“My hands are like twisted claws,” Jay said, lifting them in demonstration after a long Saturday at the end of November, spent entirely in the shop. “I can’t hold a screwdriver for another second. And it’s getting dark out.”

“It’s not even five,” Mike said. 

He took the toolbox out of Jay’s lap anyway, and hefted himself up off the floor. They’d started the day standing, working at the front counter, but they were old enough now that after three hours of that they’d switched to sitting on the floor in the back room, surrounded by VCRs in various stages of repair. Mike cursed when he kicked a half-empty beer bottle over as he made his way over the shelf where they kept their tools. 

“Fine!” he shouted, at the bottle that was spilling all over the floor in defiance of him. “We’ll stop for the night. I’ll even buy you a beer, lobster boy.”

“Lobster boy?” Jay said, standing. 

“Claw hands, Jay. Try to keep up.”

Jay mopped the spilled beer up with paper towels, though it was Mike’s mess. Jay knew that Mike would leave it there to become a workplace hazard, and also seemed to take some kind of perverse pleasure in cleaning up after him. Mike couldn’t judge him for it. He had his own perverse pleasures, some of them Jay-related. 

It was going to snow later that evening and the air outside already smelled of it. They walked to their usual bar with their hands in their coat pockets and their chins bent down toward their chests, pushing into the wind. Jay was talking about something Mike wasn’t interested in. Mike was half-listening. Liking Jay’s voice made it comforting to have him around and blathering even if he was for some reason telling Mike about a 4K restoration of an 80s movie about murderous cheerleaders. This fondness for blood-splattered women in cinema was a thing about Jay that Mike didn’t really get. He couldn’t figure out which direction it was coming from, whether Jay was some kind of unrealized serial killer type, if he identified with the women themselves or fantasized about being the hero who saved them, or if it was some unholy combination of all three. In real life he mostly seemed afraid of women, including the ones he’d dated, and he looked at Mike with utter disgust if Mike ever tried to psychoanalyze him.

Which was so unfair, because Jay had a whole library of opinions on Mike’s maladjustments. He wouldn’t say so to Mike, who only knew this because they had mutual friends who had betrayed Jay by telling Mike how often Jay talked about him. Mike wasn’t sure why everything Jay said about him got back to him via gossip, but his competing theories were that the friends who lived outside their two person bubble either want to drive them apart or thought they were secretly in love with each other and that they needed to be prodded into some kind of drama that would make them both admit it.

At the bar, they started with the egg nog special, in honor of the oncoming holidays. It was heavy with brandy and delicious. Jay loved Christmas; Mike was ambivalent. He liked watching Jay bake cookies and decorate his apartment like a tool, and liked buying gifts for him. Jay was the only person in Mike’s life who expected presents from him anymore.

“I’m not working tomorrow,” Jay said, wiping egg nog off his mustache. “So don’t ask.” 

Mike smirked at the implication that if he were to ask, Jay would have to say yes.

“Fine,” Mike said. “The Packers have an afternoon game, anyway. I’ll be getting hammered and watching that. You want to come over?”

“I hate day drinking,” Jay said, which wasn’t true. He just hated the return of his beer gut as he approached forty. Like Mike, he had known the heady heights of being extremely good-looking for a couple of years. Jay was still pretty much there but was recently having a pout about aging out of the time when he’d had a godlike glow of new confidence that made strangers in the Pick n Save stare at him. For Mike it had come much sooner, in his mid-twenties rather than mid-thirties, and he was still getting laid at the precise rate he wanted to, so what the fuck did he care? 

“Like you have anything better to do,” Mike said, elbowing him. “C’mon, I’ll make wings.”

“You always say you’re going to cook and then you never do.” 

Mike was going to argue that this wasn’t strictly true, but the bartender was lingering and smiling at them like she’d noticed their empty egg nog glasses, so he let it go and ordered a beer for himself and for Jay, afraid that Jay would call it quits and head home after one round if Mike didn’t take action. 

“You guys are so cute,” the bartender said, still giving Mike that weird smile.

She walked off to get the beers. Jay scowled. He hated being called cute.

“What the hell did she mean by that?” Jay asked. 

“She probably wants to fuck you,” Mike said. It was a safe bet. Jay still got stared at. He just noticed it less now that he considered himself sub-perfect. “Go for it,” Mike said with a shrug when Jay turned his scowl on him. “If you do a good job we could levy this into free drinks.”

The bartender was already headed back toward them with two beer-filled pint glasses. She was younger than them, slim and short with brown hair that she’d pulled into two thin pigtails in a way that somehow wasn’t obnoxious. She was still looking at not just Jay but also Mike with a funny kind of wistfulness as she delivered the beers. 

“Settle a bet for me,” Mike said, because Jay was having a sulk and clearly not going to try to bed this girl who was making eyes at him, which was typical. “When you said we were, uh, cute, just now? You meant him, right?” 

He pointed at Jay, and the bartender laughed like this was some inside joke. 

“You’re both cute,” she said. “A cute couple, is what I meant. Sorry, I just heard you talking about who was gonna make dinner or something. And you’re always in here together. It’s sweet.” 

She seemed a little embarrassed and walked off with another smile, heading for the other side of the bar, where three crusty old dudes who resembled the bar’s more typical demographic were waiting to order another round. 

Mike guffawed as quietly as he could and looked over at Jay, expecting him to laugh, too. Jay had fucked at least two guys that Mike knew about, so it didn’t really make sense that he looked like he was insulted by the assumption that he was Mike’s boyfriend, unless it had more to do with Mike than with sleeping with dudes. 

“She’s worked here all year,” Jay said. “And she’s assumed we were together the whole time?”

“You do tend to sit a little too close to me,” Mike said, batting his eyelashes when Jay snarled at him. This was actually an accusation Jay had hurled at Mike in the past.

“Jesus,” Jay said, muttering this into his beer as he tipped it toward his lips. “I can only imagine.”

“You can only imagine what, Jay?” Mike gulped from his own beer and prepared to be insulted. It wasn’t a big deal. They made fun of each other all the time. He elbowed Jay so that he’d be extra irritated when he answered this question. “Huh? What are you imagining, exactly? The complete hell of a life as my little bedmate?”

“Eugh,” Jay said, cringing away from him dramatically. “See, there, that right there. That you would call the person you’re fucking your _little bedmate_. Horrible.”

“Whereas I find it disturbing, _Jay_ , that you would call your boyfriend the person you’re fucking. You cold bastard.” 

Jay smirked a little and Mike felt his heart do some kind of thing. He hadn’t expected Jay to be entertained by this discussion on any level, was braced to be told he was disgusting and to watch Jay storm out, red-faced, without chipping in for the drinks. Jay had dated people in brief spurts but had never referred to them as girlfriends or boyfriends or ever really talked about them at all, as if human relationships were repulsive necessities that should not be discussed in polite conversation. 

Mike sort of loved this about him, secretly.

“God, you’d be the worst,” Jay said. He leaned in close to Mike again, maybe so the bartender wouldn’t hear them discussing their hypothetical relationship. “You would slobber pet names all over the poor fucker. Especially if it was me, because you’d know I hate it and you think it’s cute when you’re annoying. I would have to shower like five times a day to wash your sappy bullshit off of me.” 

“Oh? Are you sure that’s what you’d be washing off, five times a day?”

Jay stared deadpan at Mike for half a second before breaking. Mike could see it coming even before Jay’s mouth quirked and his shoulders jumped: his eyes got brighter first, sort of sparkled when he wrinkled his nose, then he was laughing and holding his hand over his mouth, leaning down over the bar to hide the fact that he was blushing, too. 

Mike watched this triumphantly and took several big swallows from his pint glass. He wanted to get drunk and really fucking do this. His favorite thing in the world was speculating about a scene or a story while Jay listened and put in a contribution or two, and this was a story Mike suddenly really wanted to tell. 

“Right, five times a day,” Jay said. His eyes did that twinkly thing again when he met Mike’s gaze. “I’m so sure you’d be up for that.” 

“Are you saying you would be?”

“No comment,” Jay said, back to muttering into his glass. 

“Oh ho ho, what now? What’s this?” Mike poked Jay’s shoulder and didn’t bother to conceal the gloating glee on his face. Jay’s was still red, and he gave Mike a sideways look like a warning to watch his step. Mike wasn’t gonna, though. “You want it five times a day? Is that right? Huh. Yeah, you’d wear me out. Let’s not only focus on what a trial _I_ would be in this alternate hell universe where we’re together, Jay. You would drain me dry every day, mercilessly. I would be your sex slave!”

“Shh! Jesus, lower your voice!” 

“Too close to home, huh? How many people have dumped you because they couldn’t satisfy your insatiable urges-- Oww!”

Mike was laughing, though Jay really was hitting him pretty hard. He was doing it under the bartop, punching Mike’s leg, maybe so the bartender who thought they were a cute couple wouldn’t see this and have her romantic notions crushed. 

“You’re stronger than you look,” Mike said, rubbing his leg when Jay relented. 

“Wow, that really means a lot, coming from you.”

“I detect sarcasm.”

“Yeah, because you think I’m a weakling. That would be a nightmare, oh my god, if you thought it was up to you to take care of me or whatever warped idea you have about what dating means. You’d be relentless.”

“Your idea of relentless is someone asking if you’re okay once, so. Maybe.”

They both drank from their beers, some of the fun drained from this game because Jay had shouted at Mike about this before, while drunk. It was hard for Mike to care about people without acting paternal and maybe a little patronizing. He was wounded by the reminder but wasn’t ready to stop picking on Jay or to start talking about anything real, so he changed course. 

“I’m sure I’d be scandalized by whatever dark deeds you do in bed,” Mike said. He gulped down the last of his beer and waved for another, pointing at Jay’s glass, too. 

“What exactly do you think I’m into?” Jay asked. He was giving Mike a look that was somewhere between offended and flattered. 

“Hmmm,” Mike said, smiling to himself as the bartender approached. 

“Same for you both?” she asked, grabbing Mike’s glass while Jay threw back the last swallows in his own. 

“I dunno,” Mike said, and he reached over to slide his hand across Jay’s back. Jay froze, his empty pint glass still pressed against his lip. “Honey? You want another of the same, or something else?”

Jay put his glass down very carefully and gave Mike a look of quietly seething hatred. Mike just smiled sweetly and rubbed his back. 

“Same’s fine,” Jay said, still a little breathless from gulping his beer down.

The bartender cheerfully grabbed his glass and went off to get their refills. Jay’s back twitched under Mike’s hand. 

“This would be the worst part,” Jay said.

“What’s that, dear?”

“You don’t know how to keep your hands to yourself.”

“Most humans enjoy the comfort of physical contact, Jay.” 

“Yeah, and so do I, but not in public. It’s embarrassing.”

Mike shrugged and took his hand off Jay’s back, bothered by how rejected he felt. As if he was really trying to seduce Jay. Sometimes it flat out stunned him that anyone ever had. Jay was not easy to impress and didn’t seem to need anyone. 

“So you admit it,” Mike said. 

“What.”

“You secretly like to be cuddled, as long as nobody’s watching.”

“I didn’t say that!” 

“Mhm, you did, though, in a manner of speaking.”

“So what?” Jay mumbled, and when he drank from his beer his face got red again. 

Mike was struggling to come up with a funny, cutting reply, thrown by this confession and fixated on the mental image of Jay letting himself cling to someone behind a closed door. He had often pitied Jay’s less-than-significant others, but anyone who had seen that secret side of him was lucky. 

“Awww,” Mike said, unable to resist. He reached for Jay again, then held his hand up in a surrendering gesture when Jay glared at him. “And here I was imagining you tying people up and making them pay for your dry cleaning in the event of come stains.” 

“Right, ‘cause I’m just that much of an asshole. I’m not into tying people up, so stop picturing it.”

“What are you into? Wait, let me try to guess. Blood? Biting?”

Jay just shook his head and drank more beer. 

“Assless chaps?” Mike said, and that got Jay to laugh, at least.

“Jesus.” Jay gave Mike a fidgety glance, probably not looking coy on purpose. “What do you do in bed that’s so superior? Doggystyle and coming on people’s faces?”

“Who even calls it doggystyle?” Mike asked, eyes wide.

“And then when it’s over you put on the TV and eat in bed while the poor woman lies there with your sweaty arm around her--”

“Bold of you to assume it’s always a woman.” 

Jay reared back a little and gave Mike a skeptical look, eyes narrowed and nose wrinkled. 

“You’re full of shit,” he said. 

“Am I, Jay?” 

Mike waggled his eyebrows while Jay studied him with some kind of fascinated horror, pornographic mental images surely flicking through his blown mind. In truth, Mike had only ever fucked one guy, and the fact that he was blond and short may have had something to do with it. 

“And I don’t eat in bed,” Mike said, which wasn’t true.

“I’ve _seen_ you eat in bed!” 

“What? When!”

“I don’t know, some night when we were drunk. You had a pizza box in your lap. I vividly remember this.”

“Well, I don’t! Where were you while this was going on? In my bedroom?”

“I was sitting on the bed with you, we were watching TV in there because your living room set was broken--”

“Are you sure this wasn’t just a vivid fantasy you conjured, Jay?”

“Yeah, Mike, my wildest sexual dreams are about sitting in bed with you, drunk, eating pizza.” 

“I’ll bet they are, you dirty pervert. Bet you ate some of that pizza right out of my lap, too.”

Mike could see that Jay was also stunned by how sincerely filthy that sounded, less like a joke and more like something that was making Mike feel like he might get a boner. 

“Doubtful,” Jay said, avoiding Mike’s stare. He looked relieved when the bartender returned with their refills. 

“Seriously,” Mike said when she was gone. He leaned closer to Jay, getting in his personal space until he turned to give Mike a look of indignation. He didn’t move away, so Mike lingered, smirking. “Tell me what you’re into, if you don’t want me to keep guessing.” 

“Guess all you want. I’m not telling you shit.” 

To Mike’s genuine astonishment, there was something increasingly flirty going on. He felt weird, sort of flushed and happy and nowhere near drunk enough to blame it on the booze.

“On a scale of one to ten,” Mike said, “How weird is it?” 

“What do you think I have, like, a singular mating ritual?” 

Jay looked amused, and still wasn’t pushing Mike out of his face. Mike felt encouraged in a way he hadn’t realized he’d been craving. 

“I mean, yes,” Mike said. “You’re like one of those foreign emissary guest stars on Star Trek--” 

“Of course you’re going to somehow make this about Star Trek. God, I bet someone has spoken those exact words to you in bed. Or multiple people.” 

“Wrong.” Mike had long wanted to do Star Trek role play in bed, but he’d never been with anybody long enough to feel it was an acceptable request. “Anyway, as I was saying. You’re like a special visitor to the Enterprise, one of those easily offended ones whose culture is all finicky and strange. In the bedroom, I mean, this is how you are. I am fucking certain of it.” 

“And yet the most exotic things you can imagine me doing are bondage and biting.” 

“I said blood, too! Jesus, whatever you’re into is probably not even a known thing. It’s some like, special ceremony you invented.”

“Why do you think this?” Jay asked. He looked kind of flattered, also sincerely confused. 

Because you’re special, Mike almost said. Jay was the only friend he had who was, like, interesting.

“You just have that freaky energy,” Mike said, waving his hand in front of Jay’s face. “You’re all buttoned up in public and you never talk about sex. Do you know I once asked that girl you used to sleep with what you were like in bed?”

“Yes. She told me.” 

“Well.” Mike took a few big swallows from his beer, embarrassed. Of course she’d told Jay that his friend had drunkenly inquired about his performance in the bedroom. “She didn’t let any of your secrets slip, rest assured.”

“She thought you were gross for asking.” 

“I could tell. Anyway. Oh, I bet I know what you’re into. Edging!” 

“Eugh,” Jay said, shuddering. “I hate hearing these words out loud. They sound stupid as fuck.”

“I didn’t hear a denial in there!”

“Maybe you’re just guessing all the stuff you’re into. I know you get off on driving a joke into the ground. You’d be insufferable in bed. With the, like. Teasing.” 

Jay glanced over at Mike after saying so. They both grabbed for their beers.

“Would you want me to tease you, Jay?” Mike asked when he was still a little breathless from chugging his beer. 

“I would not,” Jay said, but the startled look he had on his face said otherwise. He was blushing and bright-eyed. 

“Bullshit,” Mike said, grinning. What was happening? Something good! “Nobody who doesn’t like being teased could ever stand being my best friend.”

“That’s different, Mike.”

“Is it, though? Okay, wow, yeah. I had it all wrong. You don’t want to tie people up and bite them and all that. You want to be the one who gets tied up, yeah? And taunted. Fuck, I can totally see you getting off on being degraded by women.” 

Jay rolled his eyes and drank. Mike pulled back a little. Maybe he was straying into deescalating territory there.

“What about role play?” Mike asked, picturing Jay in a Star Trek uniform. Maybe a torn-up red shirt, after Captain Mike had saved him from certain doom-- 

“What about it?” Jay was fidgeting in his seat, still bright red. 

“Do you like it? I bet you would. With me. I bet your partners have been letting you down, because no one’s as twisted and creative as you are. Except me!” 

Jay tried not to grin. Mike bit his lip and swooned in toward him, also smiling. 

“You’d want to torture me,” Jay said. “And call it role play.”

“Yeah, and you’d fucking love it.”

Jay exhaled in a way that seemed like an invitation to kiss him. Mike was definitely getting a boner, and he didn’t even want it to go away. The bartop and the coat in his lap hid it effectively enough, and he sort of had a thing for doing shit in public. 

“You _would_ love it,” Mike said, though Jay hadn’t denied this. They were both breathing a little harder, leaning toward each other like they were telling secrets. “I wouldn’t even need to tie you up. I’d get you so into it. Get into your head the way nobody else can, make you all fucked up and desperate. You’d be on your knees and begging. God, the way you’d say my name. That whining way you do, when you want something.” 

“I don’t--”

“Yes, you do. You do, Jay. Fuck, it almost makes me hard sometimes. When you say it like, ‘Miiiiike,’ like I’m so cruel and you’re so good, putting up with what I make you do.”

“That gets you off?” Jay’s eyebrows went up. “Figures.”

“Fuck yeah it does. When I can tell you think you’re being such a good boy, asking my permission to take a leak.”

“I’ve never done that!”

“At work, you totally have! You have, Jay, I’ll never forget it.” He would probably never not beat off to variations on this scenario, too.

Jay huffed and drank from his beer, finishing the last of it. Mike’s was nearly gone, too. He told himself to slow down. He didn’t want to forget any part of whatever was about to happen. 

“You’re all flustered,” Mike said, and he reached over to brush his fingertips across the back of Jay’s neck, where his skin had gone pinkish. 

Jay shivered and made a noise. He was so hot across his cheeks that he was basically glowing, looking like he needed to be rescued.

“If you were a Star Trek character,” Mike said, murmuring this close to Jay’s ear while Jay stared intently at his beer glass, “You would be the kind of humanoid alien who went into heat. Yeah, that’s it. Like, Vulcan-ish, usually very controlled and logical and then-- Bam!”

Mike slapped the bartop hard with his palm. Jay jumped in his seat and boggled at him. Several people turned to stare, then went back to their drinks. 

“Suddenly you’re hit with the need to fuck all day long,” Mike said, now speaking directly into Jay’s ear, soft and low. “And then you just can’t get enough of it. And you’d be all wobbly-kneed and weak with it, you’d need someone to do all the work while you just lay there taking dick and getting drenched in come.” 

“Jesus christ,” Jay said. He looked at Mike with a combination of horror and admiration. 

“Are you hard?” Mike asked, glancing down at the coat covering Jay’s lap. He was holding it there with both hands. “‘Cause I am, like, in a big way.” 

Jay snorted and rubbed his hand over his face. He looked up and down the bar, searching for something, and when he met Mike’s gaze again there was something soft in his eyes. It tugged at Mike’s heartstrings and also made his dick twitch, because it looked a little bit like gratitude, or relief. 

“What am I supposed to do about your boner?” Jay asked, in a tone like he was maybe joking, which made the way he’d said the word _boner_ disturbingly adorable. 

“Well.” Mike cleared his throat. His mouth felt dry. One more beer? No, later! “What would you do about it if you were my boyfriend?” he asked. “Or my little bedmate, or the guy I’m fucking, or whatever?”

Jay mashed his lips together and let Mike tuck an arm around his back. Mike sat up very straight and peered down into Jay’s face while he squirmed and considered his options. Jay was definitely hard. Mike could see it in his fattened pupils and feel it in the quick, nervous way he was breathing.

“Actually,” Jay said, craning his neck to mutter this into Mike’s ear. “One thing, I’ve, uh, always wanted to do? Is have sex in a nasty bar bathroom.”

“You’ve never done that?” Mike said, rearing back a little. He’d done it like five times in the past few years alone, that time with the blond guy included. 

Jay shook his head slowly while holding Mike’s gaze. He looked innocent, or afraid, or something. Mike was pretty sure it was an act but didn’t mind at all. He fucking knew Jay would be into role play. As long as they talked about this as though it were only hypothetical, they could also actually do it. 

“So who goes in first?” Mike asked, stroking Jay’s back in a way that he hoped was both comforting and menacing. “Me or you?”

“You in me,” Jay said, and he beamed at the answering look on Mike’s face.

“Really?” Mike said, too stunned to pretend that he wasn’t.

“Go back there and wait for me, and find out.”

Mike got off his barstool clumsily, holding his coat in front of him to hide the bulge in his jeans. He kept looking at Jay for another signal, but Jay was just calmly getting his wallet out and pulling out a card to pay for the drinks. When Mike turned for the men’s room he was half certain that Jay was playing an evil prank on him and would just leave the bar without him, then laugh at him when he came out into the cold after waiting god knew how long for Jay to show up. 

By the time he was pushing into the bathroom, Mike was trying not to think about what a bad idea this was, because he really fucking wanted it-- Which was exactly why it was such a terrible risk. He didn’t just want to fool around while tipsy and feel awkward about it later, and was already sure he wouldn’t survive being laughed at if Jay revealed this was all a prank. If they were going to do this, for Mike it would change everything. He could fuck people casually, even friends, but not Jay. 

Jay wasn’t just another friend. He was Mike’s little lifemate. 

Mike went into the bathroom’s only stall, which was big enough for four people to stand in comfortably. He’d fucked several people in this very stall, but couldn’t remember the details. He didn’t have a condom or lube or really any idea what he was going to do next. 

The bathroom door opened. Mike cracked the stall door a little bit, indicating his presence. He could hear Jay snicker before pulling the door open and stepping inside. 

Jay locked it behind him and stared up at Mike. This was the moment when they would either start laughing hysterically or-- What? Mike couldn’t think. He was overcome by a sudden awareness of how much bigger than Jay he was. It hadn’t felt that way when they were seated together at the bar, even with Jay melting in red-faced arousal next to him. 

“Mike--” Jay said, just the way Mike had wanted him to, begging with an edge of self-pity, and Mike grabbed for him.

He gave Jay a crashing, forceful kiss, wanting to demonstrate that he knew what he was doing, which didn’t feel true even when Jay opened his lips for Mike’s pushy tongue. Jay had sort of ridiculously pink lips and Mike had thought about them a lot over the years. It was surreal to have his lips pressed to Jay’s, and to lick into his mouth and feel him liking it, if the tented erection Jay was trying to grind against Mike’s leg was any indication. They’d both dropped their coats on the dirty floor. Jay’s mouth was wet under Mike’s, and his face was hot when Mike held it in both hands, tipping his head back to get better access. 

“Fuck,” Jay said, breathing this out when Mike stared down at him. Then Jay’s hand was on Mike’s dick, rubbing at him through his jeans. “You’re really hard,” he said, grinning. 

“Told you.” Mike groaned and snapped his hips against Jay’s hand without meaning to. He brought his mouth to Jay’s ear and exhaled there. “Pretty sure that’s your dick that you’re rubbing on my leg like a desperate slut, so. You are, too.” 

“Mike,” Jay said again, and Mike kissed him. He snaked his hand down between them and clamped it around Jay’s cock, smirking down into Jay’s face when this made him gasp and go still. His eyes were muggy in the dim bathroom light, and his lips were slick and shiny. 

“I’m so right about you,” Mike said, because he knew Jay would hate this statement, and that he would get off on hating it while Mike squeezed his stiff dick through his jeans. “Aren’t I? You probably wait and wait and get off on waiting, and then when you finally let yourself go it feels so fucking good. Jesus, like. Do you even realize how intense it’s going to be when I fuck your ass? After twenty years?”

Jay groaned and grabbed for Mike, pulling him back down for a kiss. Mike laughed against his mouth, couldn’t believe how well this was working. Was Jay super drunk? It didn’t seem like it. Mike put his hands on Jay’s shoulders and pressed down until Jay broke the kiss, dizzily dropping onto the flats of his feet again. He’d been leaning up to kiss Mike, nearly on his toes.

“Not here, though,” Mike said. “I’m gonna need supplies. I mean, you can feel it, yeah?” Mike pressed Jay’s hand against his dick more firmly. “Don’t want to hurt you with that.” 

Jay smiled a little, just at the corner of his mouth. He was trembling, Mike realized, mostly in his fingers. Mike kissed Jay’s cheek and pulled his shaky hand up toward the button on his jeans. 

“You can suck me off here, though,” Mike said. He realized quickly that he should have phrased this as a command, because if Jay didn’t get off on being bossed around Mike didn’t know anything about anything. “Get on your knees,” he said, stepping back to give Jay room.

Jay looked down at the floor and then back up into Mike’s face, as if to check to make sure he was serious. Mike kept his face completely stony, made his eyes a little mean. Jay bit his lip and kicked their coats over so that he could kneel on them, then started sinking down.

Mike was too dazed by his disbelief that this was actually happening to fully appreciate how hot it was to watch Jay settle onto his knees and reach obediently for the button on Mike’s jeans, his breath coming fast. Reality itself felt fragile. Mike’s hands were in fists at his sides. Jay slid his zipper down and gave him a nervous glance before reaching in and pulling his boxers down, too. Mike could only moan at the sight of his cock nearly smacking Jay in the face when it sprang free. Jay licked his lips and stared. 

“Say you want it,” Mike said, the words falling off his tongue before he could consider them.

“I want it,” Jay said, his voice breaking. He looked up at Mike. “Please. Please let me.”

“Mhm.” Mike dragged his fingers through Jay’s hair and felt the residue of some sort of styling product come away on them. “Okay. Go ahead, show me how much you like making me happy.”

Jay gave Mike a petulant look, as if that had broken through some element of this game. Mike just smiled down at him, glad that he could still piss Jay off while nudging him into submission. 

Mike’s breath caught when Jay licked him. Pleasure that felt more novel than it should have raced down the backs of his legs and made him feel weak-kneed for a moment. He didn’t get his dick sucked near often enough. He was big in a way that most of his partners liked, but not when it came to fitting him in their mouths. 

“There’s a good boy,” Mike murmured when Jay took him into the heat of his mouth, his eyes sinking shut with what looked like satisfaction. Mike pet Jay’s hair again and breathed out hard through his nose, glad he’d had three drinks. Jay’s mouth felt like heaven, Jay on his knees for this was a dream come true, and Mike wanted this to last for so long. He felt like he could just stay like this for hours, with Jay’s straining lips wrapped around his dick and Jay’s tongue soft and wet against the underside, moving in hungry little flicks as he took Mike deeper.

“Fuck,” Mike said when Jay was gagging on him and still trying to press down further, his shoulders jumping when he coughed. “Careful,” Mike said. Jay lifted his gaze and Mike had to swallow some kind of whimpery thing down when their eyes met. “Don’t get greedy, now,” he said. “Yeah, there, good. Just take what you can, mhm. You can have it all later. Gonna have that dick balls deep in your ass soon.” 

Jay moaned around Mike’s cock, and Mike had to lift his fist to his mouth and bite the side of his hand to keep from making some kind of noise that would have been loud enough to be heard by the patrons out in the bar. 

“You like the sound of that, huh?” Mike said when he could talk again. Jay had his eyes closed and was bobbing his head around all of Mike’s cock that he could take without choking, eager and shameless. He sighed when Mike gripped his hair and slowed him down a little. 

Mike supposed it probably wasn’t unusual to feel like you loved someone so much you would die for them while they sucked your dick. He’d never personally felt it before Jay, however, before now. There was something ironically innocent about how unafraid Jay was to show Mike he was enjoying this, eyelashes fluttering and drool gathering at the corners of his lips, and he hadn’t even pulled off to take a breath since he’d taken Mike into his mouth. Mike felt so suddenly tender toward him, and also like grabbing his head with both hands and fucking his mouth. It was a combination that made him almost tearful with joy. 

“You like being good at this, don’t you?” Mike said, because Jay also seemed to like it when he talked. He stroked Jay’s hollowed cheeks with one hand, still holding his hair with the other. “Yeah, you do. So proud of yourself, down there on your knees. Oh-- God, yeah, take it. So good at taking it, shit. Should have known, ah. This is what it’d take to make you sweet.”

Mike started to shift his hips back, forward again. The way Jay went still and closed his eyes looked and felt like: yes, please. Noticing that Jay had his hands resting over his bent knees almost put Mike over the edge for reasons he couldn’t work out at the moment. Jay was hard in his jeans but not touching himself, and his hands were tensing up and relaxing, tensing up and relaxing, like something at the center of him was throbbing with a pulse that dragged through his whole body. 

“Gonna come,” Mike said when there was no going back, his teeth grit with the last of his resolve while he fucked into Jay’s willing mouth, not letting himself get too wild but not being very careful, either. “You ready? You want it?”

Jay hummed around him and tried to nod. 

“Tell me,” Mike said, pushing Jay’s forehead back until his dick popped out from between Jay’s puffy lips.

“I-- I want it,” Jay said, his voice so much more broken than it had been last time. “Please, Mike, let me, I’ll-- Please--”

“Shh, okay, okay-- Here it is, here you go.”

Mike watched Jay take him back into his mouth like he was desperate for it, and just feeling his soft, hot mouth closing around his dick again was enough to set Mike off. He started to come while Jay was still sinking down onto him, and Jay swallowed reflexively, his head bobbing with every swallow like a kind of nod, like he was saying thank you, good, yes, more.

Mike was biting his hand. He hadn’t realized how hard he’d bitten himself until he was finished unloading into Jay’s mouth and still shaky, his spent dick throbbing dryly as he slipped free. Jay had swallowed every fucking drop, and while Mike tucked himself away he stayed on his knees, looking up at Mike and breathing hard through his parted lips. 

“Jesus,” Mike said, and before he could think about it he was on his knees, too, kissing Jay hard enough to knock him against the side of the stall and make the whole structure shake around them. 

Jay laughed a little and put his arms around Mike’s neck. He kissed back like he was still hungry for more. His tongue tasted like Mike’s come, also beer. Mike moaned into his mouth and pressed him even harder against the creaking stall. If anyone came in they’d be caught, both on their knees, visible from beneath the gap between the stall door and the floor. 

“I was gonna make you wait till we got back to your place,” Mike said when he pulled free, slipping his hand down to squeeze Jay’s cock through his pants. Jay made a high-pitched, desperate noise and let his eyes fall shut, his head thunking back against the wall of the stall behind him. “But you did such a good job,” Mike said, leaning in to lick at Jay’s neck after saying so. “Gonna get you off here, then again at home. Stand up.” 

Jay looked surprised when he opened his eyes again. Did he really think Mike wasn’t going to return the favor? Mike kissed him, probably too sweetly to suit the moment, and grinned when Jay put his hands on his shoulders to hoist himself up. 

“So you get all quiet during sex,” Mike said when Jay was standing, opening his jeans. “Interesting.” 

Jay just shrugged, pushed the waistband of his briefs down and took his cock out, looking shy about it with his shoulders curled forward a little. His dick was about what Mike had expected after squeezing it through his jeans: half the size of Mike’s and gleaming at the slit with pre-come in a way that made Mike want it in his mouth, which had never been strictly true of another guy’s dick before.

“Do you want me to talk less?” Mike asked, just to hear him say no.

“Only if you’re too busy sucking my dick,” Jay said. 

Mike grinned up at him. Jay smiled back. He had his hands pressed against the wall behind him, was waiting patiently despite being so hard that it looked a little painful. 

Mike was too into this to worry that he wouldn’t be good at it. One lick across the sticky slit of Jay’s cock made Jay moan loud enough that Mike had to shush him. Jay seemed to like being told to be quiet, based on the fat drops of pre-come that leaked out against Mike’s mouth. Jay pressed his lips together and pushed his dick against Mike’s tongue when he licked him again. Jay tasted clean and warm and Mike didn’t even mind the pre-come. It was like being told he was doing a good job, that Jay was already close to his edge. 

The noises Jay was making were even better, bitten-off little whines and soft whimpers. Mike took him in fully, moaning at the feeling of the way Jay filled his mouth: perfectly, just right. Jay grunted and grabbed Mike’s head with both hands, and Mike almost choked out a laugh when Jay started moving his hips, fucking Mike’s mouth like he’d run out of patience. His thighs were shaking hard in Mike’s hands. 

“Mike,” Jay said, and Mike’s cock jerked in his pants, because oh fuck he was going to make Jay say his name a hundred times tonight alone, over and over, with that deseprate shake in his voice. 

Mike pulled off, hoping Jay would cry about it. Jay made a frustrated noise and kept his hands on Mike’s head, his fingers tense against Mike’s skull. 

“Need to come?” Mike asked, taunting him. 

“Fuh, yes, please--”

“You want to come in my mouth?”

“Mike.” Jay half-sobbed and looked down at Mike, panting. “Yes, I don’t care, please, just--”

Mike stared up at Jay with an evil expression and licked him too softly, then held him still when he tried to push forward for more. 

“You’re shaking so hard,” Mike said. “Beg me.”

“I did, I am, I’m begging, please--” 

“Ow,” Mike said, because Jay was pulling his hair. 

“Mike, please, _fuck_ , I need to come so bad, please--”

That was good enough for a first try, Mike figured. He took Jay into his mouth again and didn’t even give a fuck that the way Jay moaned in overwhelmed relief was probably audible to anyone out in the bar who was sitting near the men’s room. He loosened his grip on Jay’s thighs and let Jay fuck his mouth again, strangely sort of loved the feeling.

He could feel it on his tongue when Jay reached his breaking point and tipped over it, that unbearable tightness of winding pressure before the relief and the first throbbing pulse of release. Mike swallowed it down and felt Jay’s muscles go slack in his grip as he unloaded, still pulling Mike’s hair. Jay was quiet again, just breathing hard and sighing. 

“Can you even stand?” Mike asked when he'd pulled off and wiped his lips. He was pressing Jay’s legs back against he stall just in case the answer was no. 

“I don’t know,” Jay said, looking braindead and happy. He grinned when Mike stood and used the full weight of his body to hold Jay up against the stall, crushing him there. Jay’s spent dick was pressed between them, possibly still drooling out the last drops onto Mike’s sweater, but he didn’t care. 

“Gonna let me kiss you with this taste on my tongue?” Mike asked, because he could see Jay wanting it, looking at his mouth. 

“This is the smuggest I’ve ever seen someone look after swallowing my come,” Jay said. He smiled and only winced a little when Mike nuzzled his cheek. 

“C’mere,” Mike said, though Jay was already there, surging up onto his toes for a kiss. Mike just had to say something that wasn’t: so you’re never leaving my side again, that’s settled.

Jay’s mouth was hot and felt used in the best way, addictively debauched. Mike wanted to kiss him for hours. He knew they shouldn’t do it here, that they were already lucky nobody had walked in, so he made himself stop. Jay didn’t seem ready to let him go, but didn’t protest when Mike reached down between them to tuck his dick in for him. 

Mike collected their coats from the floor and handed Jay’s over. Taking it, Jay looked a little nervous, like he was going to ask what happened now. 

“Let’s go back to your place,” Mike said, unwilling to hesitate and spoil this. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

They left the stall together, and Mike washed his hands while Jay went out into the bar. Mike looked at himself in the mirror and gave himself a mental pep talk about not fucking this up. Jay was so comfortable and familiar, Mike’s longest running most favorite thing, but the rest of this was all brand new shit for both of them. They would probably be bad at it, at first. Mike didn’t care, as long as it stayed real.

He found Jay waiting for him near the door of the bar. On his way out he waved to the bartender, who smiled back in a way that made it seem like she had no idea what had just gone on in the bathroom, which was good. Jay was a little red-faced when Mike reached him, and worried looking. They didn’t say anything as they walked out in the cold night together, coats buttoned and shoulders lifting when the wind blasted them. 

It had started to snow, and something about the steady way it was falling around them made the night seem quiet in a way that kept Mike from talking. He wasn’t sure what to say, anyway. He didn’t want to avoid the subject of what had just happened, but was afraid if he started to talk about it he’d get on his knees and ask Jay to marry him. He wasn’t good at controlling his emotions once he allowed them to unspool.

They walked past the square where a giant Christmas tree had appeared just before Thanksgiving. Now it was lit, and two children were posing in front of it while their mother took pictures with her cell phone. 

“What do you want for Christmas?” Mike asked, elbowing Jay as they passed this scene. He was walking close enough to bump his arm against Jay’s shoulder at moments as they went, and Jay didn’t seem to mind. 

“I have an Amazon wishlist,” Jay said.

Mike laughed. Jay gave him a look. 

“What?” 

“Nothing,” Mike said. “Are you hungry? Should we cook?” 

“Yeah, I have some stuff at my place.” 

Mike wasn’t sure what was happening. Were they sliding back into things as usual? Panicked at the thought, he stopped Jay in his tracks near a covered bus stop and pulled him behind it for a kiss. 

“Whoa, no,” Jay said, rearing away when Mike closed in on him. “Don’t do that out here.” 

“Why not?”

“Because-- ah!” Jay looked around nervously. “I know I just blew you in a public restroom,” he said, softly, as if anyone was even around to overhear them. “But I don’t really like public displays of affection. I don’t even like seeing them, and definitely not participating in them.”

Jay had a look of fury in his eyes that Mike couldn’t help finding adorable, even while feeling crushed by it. 

“Okay,” Mike said. “I really loved that, by the way. The-- In the, uh. Public restroom.”

“Me too,” Jay said. “But we’re not gonna make it a habit, okay?”

“We-- Oh?”

Mike’s heart plummeted fifty stories and almost splattered, but then Jay spoke again.

“I mean-- The restroom part.” Jay shuffled in place and gave Mike a soft, scared look that made him almost try for a kiss again. “The other, you know. I didn’t know you slept with guys, you fucker.” Jay punched Mike’s arm and huffed, his visible breath clouding the air between them. “If you’d told me, like. I mean, I’ve always thought, you know. You and me. It would be so easy.”

“Really. Because back at the bar you were saying a lot of shit about how you thought it would be a miserable nightmare.”

“Yeah, well. That was before I knew how good you are at sucking dick.” 

Jay grinned. Mike didn’t think it was that funny. He started walking again, hands in his pockets.

“Hey, c’mon,” Jay said, running after him. “Mike! I’m joking. I totally, I-- C’mon. You know.”

“No, I don’t. What?”

“That I-- Ah! I was just giving you a hard time. Like you were, when you said you thought I’d give people a dry cleaning bill if they got come on my sheets.” 

“Mhm. I wasn’t really joking about that.” 

“Mike, stop. Stop and look at me for a second.” 

Jay grabbed Mike’s arm and held him in place. Mike turned to him with a sigh, not sure why he was having a tantrum. He didn’t like acknowledging how much power Jay had secretly had over him all along. 

“I’m not that exciting or good at this,” Jay said. “Which is, like, obvious, I think. People don’t like dating me, they never stay friends with me after because they always end up hating me, and this is fucking embarrassing but I’m not actually that good or creative in bed. Honestly, I kind of suck at sex, so. Just, manage your expectations.”

“No,” Mike said, wanting to scoop Jay up in his arms and carry him away from this angst. 

“No?”

“You’re wrong. Those people just weren’t giving you what you needed.” 

“And what do I need, Mike.”

“Direction. C’mon.” 

Jay didn’t say anything, but Mike could feel that he was flustered and relieved at the same time, vibrating with it as they walked side by side through the cold. Mike brushed his gloved fingers against Jay’s a few times, pretending it was an accident. At one point he was pretty sure Jay did the same thing to him. 

“Do you want to hear what I’m thinking?” Mike asked. “Or are you going to freak out?”

“That’s a terrifying question, Mike.” 

“So you’ll freak out, then.” 

“I don’t know about that. What’s, uh. The nature of these thoughts?”

“Romantic. Enormously, embarrassingly. I feel like I’ve been in love with you since the day we met and I just didn’t want to deal with it.” 

Jay shrugged when Mike glanced over at him. 

“That’s how I feel, too,” Jay said, quietly enough that Mike knew he meant it.

“Oh, jesus,” Mike said, throwing his head back in relief. He took a few steps with his eyes closed, feeling snowflakes brush his cheeks. “Thank fuck. God, the things I’m gonna do to you,” he said, looking over at Jay, who was smiling a little but keeping his gaze pointed straight ahead. “The sappy, horrible things. And I’m gonna tie you up. And bite you. And dress you up in a Starfleet uniform.”

“You’ve already done that,” Jay said, which was true. Earlier that year Mike had made a fan film and forced Jay to participate. 

“Well, I haven’t fucked you in one!”

Jay threw his head back and laughed, then finally looked over at Mike. 

“Seriously, though,” Jay said. “I’m so fucking awkward in bed. Just don’t expect much.” 

“You won’t have to do anything except what I tell you to, though.” 

This had sounded less demented in Mike’s head, but Jay looked relieved, so maybe it was okay. 

“I’ve never tried that,” Jay said. 

“That’s ‘cause nobody else knows your heel commands. Only me. Who invented them!”

Jay snorted and shook his head but was grinning like he agreed, mostly.

Jay’s apartment was already decorated for Christmas. He had a little fake tree with tinsel garlands and strings of multi-colored lights hanging around most of the doorframes, and a vintage light-up plastic Santa plugged in near the living room TV. He made grilled cheese sandwiches for their dinner, with nice bread and fancy cheese. Mike was surprised Jay had any cheese or bread in his apartment at all. He hovered during every stage of the cooking process and while Jay was washing up, pretending that hugging Jay from behind was helping him with the dishes. Jay laughed at him and called him an asshole but also tilted his head so Mike could kiss his neck. 

The snow was still coming down hard outside. It was supposed to accumulate up to ten inches by the morning. Jay seemed nervous after eating and said he wanted to watch a movie. Mike said he was fine with whatever, so of course Jay put on something weird and mood-killing, though also good: _The Fly_.

Mike didn’t really mind. He got a beer from Jay’s fridge and sat close to him on the couch, slung his arm around Jay’s shoulders and pulled him closer. Jay sat there stiffly for just a few minutes before slumping over to put his cheek on Mike’s chest. He fit there perfectly, like he’d been designed to live under Mike’s arm and curled against him. 

Halfway through the movie, Jay was pretending to be asleep. Mike could feel Jay’s heart hammering even while he lay there with his eyes closed and his arm tucked across Mike’s chest, tense. So he was still afraid to let Mike down in bed, which was absurd. Mike couldn’t explain why it was impossible; he would just have to show Jay, whenever he got over himself. He ran his fingers through Jay’s hair, enjoying the ability to do so over and over without Jay’s protest, because he was so determined to fake sleep. 

When the movie was over, Mike turned it off and roused Jay gently, as if he believed this sleeping act. Jay sat up and rubbed at his eyes, mumbling questions about what time it was and if the movie had ended. Mike helped him up and followed him into the bedroom.

“I’m really tired,” Jay said, dragging himself toward the en suite bathroom.

“I can see that. Want me to go?”

“No!” Jay said, so adamantly that it hit Mike like another love confession, right in the chest. “I just--”

“It’s fine,” Mike said. “I’m gonna get in your bed, go do your beauty routine.” 

“Okay. Yeah. I’ll be right there.”

Jay’s bed was neatly made. Mike had left his boots out in the foyer, a requirement in Jay’s domain, and he took his jeans off before getting into the bed, leaving his sweater, undershirt and boxers on. The sweater would probably come off later, but alone in the bed he was still pretty cold, watching the strip of light around the closed bathroom door. Jay was running water in there, probably fretting. What had those others assholes said to him that gave him this stupid insecurity? Mike had long suspected Jay wasn’t as into women as he wanted to be, that he’d rather jack it to a movie character than get with a real girl, which explained that part of it, but what was the problem with the men? Mike wanted to believe that it was just that they weren’t him, so Jay wasn’t as fully Jay as he could let himself be with Mike. That was true in all other areas of life, anyway. 

Jay appeared in the bathroom door in his undershirt and briefs, the rest of his clothes bundled in his arms. He gave Mike a glance before going to deposit the clothes in his hamper. That Jay had a fucking hamper was the cutest thing in the world, suddenly. Mike felt so dumbly in love, just the smell of Jay on the bedsheets was making his heart heavy in a way that felt good, also terrifying. 

“Do you want to brush your teeth?” Jay asked. “I have an unopened toothbrush.” 

“Of course you do,” Mike said, charmed. Did he keep a handful of them for guests? How could his ex-bedmates not appreciate this? “But nah, I’ll do it in the morning.”

“Mike, you had egg nog.”

“Already nagging me!” Mike grinned when Jay turned to give him a look. “Get your ass over here, I’m cold.” 

Jay put a pair of pajama pants on before doing so, and flipped the light off in the bathroom on the way to the bed, throwing the room into darkness. The window over his bed was high enough that he didn’t need curtains, and Mike’s eyes adjusted to the streetlight glow from outside quickly. Jay was giving him a nervous look as he climbed in under the blankets with him and scooted closer. 

“Your bedroom is drafty,” Mike said, tucking Jay under his arm and the blankets and pulling him close. Jay clung to him and hid his face. Mike could feel the soft weight of Jay’s dick through his sleep pants, warm against his leg. It made him a little bit hard, but he wasn’t planning on seducing Jay just yet.

“Yeah, it gets cold in here,” Jay said, squeezing him. “You’re warm, though. Feels like. To me.”

“Well, I am now.” Mike kissed the top of Jay’s head. “You like this, don’t you?” he said, unable to resist teasing him about it. 

“Like-- What?” 

“Cuddling up to me. Tell me, Jay. Say it.” 

“I like it, Mike. You fuckin’ prick. You, you’re-- Ah.” Jay squirmed against Mike, pushing his thigh up between Mike’s legs in a way that was dangerously arousing. “You’re so irritating. You can’t just get everything you want, you have to be told how much you deserve it, too.”

“Aww, so you’re everything I want?” Mike snickered when Jay kicked him under the blankets. “No, I mean, you are, that’s true.” Mike moaned happily and held Jay tighter, pressing his face into Jay’s hair. “You’re the only little bedmate I want.” 

Jay grunted, maybe at the nickname, and rolled over to settle his back against Mike’s chest. Mike wrapped both arms around him in the new position and kissed his cheek. Jay’s heart was still beating fast. 

“You can fuck me later,” Jay said, mumbling. “I’m sleepy.” 

“I want to fuck you when you’re sleepy. Sometime, I mean. Doesn’t have to be tonight.” He licked Jay’s cheek, his ear, and realized he was going to have a hard time not just licking him all night long. “Comfortable?”

“How many more ways do you need to hear this feels good? Yes, Mike.”

Mike hadn’t even been fishing for admission then, but he liked it. He stayed awake for a while, reveling in this, and Jay adjusted against him a few times before actually drifting off. He was responsive to Mike’s touches even while half-asleep, pressing into it when Mike stroked his back and rubbed his neck. His fingers twitched when Mike lifted his little hand and kissed his knuckles. 

As Mike had witnessed previously, in non-romantic contexts, Jay slept with his mouth slightly open and drooled a little. Mike wiped at the corner of Jay’s lips periodically as he slept, trying to stay awake and enjoy every single second of this, their first night together. At one point he experimentally pushed the pad of his thumb against Jay’s lips and almost laughed out loud when Jay sucked it into his mouth in his sleep. Jay had of course been a thumbsucker as a kid. Mike had gotten this out of Jay’s sister years ago but didn’t really need to be told. Like most of what he knew about Jay, it was intuitive. 

He had to pull his thumb out of Jay’s mouth to keep from getting an erection that would torment him until Jay woke, because Jay was actively suckling at him and it felt really good. Jay whined in his sleep and Mike’s cock started to fill out anyway, just from that. He was the one who was going to want it five times a day. Sleeping seemed downright stupid. The rest of his life would be dedicated to making up for twenty years of lost time. 

Sunday morning came, dim behind heavy clouds that had finished blanketing the city with snow sometime during the night. Mike woke up feeling overheated. Jay was still curled up with him, his arms tucked against Mike’s chest. Mike sat up as much as necessary to remove his sweater, waking Jay in the process.

“Mmph?” Jay said, blinking at him. 

“You’re fine,” Mike said. He threw the sweater on the floor and settled down under the blankets with Jay again, pushing his legs over to tangle them with Jay’s. “I’m just hot, go back to sleep.” 

Jay yawned and moved up onto the pillow they were sharing to press his face to Mike’s. It was the most darling thing Mike had ever seen anyone do. He decided to try something, while Jay was still cuddly and unguarded like this. 

“Where do you keep your lube?” Mike asked, as sweetly as he could manage, stroking Jay’s cheek.

Jay snorted and smiled, eyes closed. 

“Headboard,” he muttered, gesturing blindly at the drawers that were built into it. 

“Of course. This is such a kinky bed, I’ve always thought so.” The drawer pulls were heavy iron loops that could easily have bindings tied through them. Mike found the lube in the drawer just over Jay’s head and studied the bottle. “Uberlube,” he said, reading the label. “Neat. Does it drive your partner home after?”

“Everyone makes that joke,” Jay said, eyes still closed. 

“Everyone? Do we need condoms?”

“No, Mike. Unless you do.”

“Excuse me, how dare you.”

“I’ve seen how you conduct yourself. In bar bathrooms.”

“Yeah, and now you’ve lived it firsthand, too. Anyway, I don’t need one. Look at me for a sec.”

Jay opened his eyes and peeked up at Mike, blinking slowly. Mike wanted to tease him about the thumbsucking thing, then ask him to do it on purpose, but that could come later. He had an idea about how this first time should go. 

“Any interest in just lying here and getting serviced?” Mike asked. “I’ll do all the work.”

“That’s novel.”

Mike flicked Jay’s arm, though that was a fair remark. Jay grinned and scooted down against Mike’s chest again, hiding his face. 

“Yeah, exactly,” Mike said, not sure if Jay was agreeing to this or not. “I owe you, for all the years at the shop when I’ve made you bust ass while I kick back. Now, you know. I could bust, shall we say, a nut, in your ass, if you want.”

Jay laughed really hard and kind of for a long time. Mike lost it, too, and his chest ached pleasantly. This was so good, the best fucking thing he’d ever had, and it was only the beginning. 

“Okay, Mike,” Jay said when he could talk again, red-faced from laughing. “You go ahead and do that.” 

“It’s the least I can do,” Mike said, already popping open the lube. “For you, my loyal companion.” 

“Loyal companion? That’s worse than little bedmate. Sounds like what you’d call a dog.” 

“The hell do you want me to call you, Jay? My sexually familiar business associate?”

“Oh my god,” Jay said, and then he was laughing again, his face pressed to Mike’s chest. He gasped there when Mike reached down and parted his ass cheeks with slick fingers. 

Jay was tight and clearly enjoyed being fingered. Mike had a wet spot on his shirt from Jay drooling for it within a minute of having one finger worked inside him. Mike took his time, despite the fact that his cock had never felt harder than it was for this, or more urgently in need of being inside someone, though not just someone: Jay, only him, only ever him again as far as Mike was concerned. Maybe he was just getting old, or maybe the noises Jay made while getting slowly worked open like this were just that good, but Mike was ready to speak marriage vows then and there, fingers up Jay’s ass and all. 

“Mike,” Jay said, tugging hard at the collar of Mike’s shirt when he’d had two fingers worked inside Jay for a while and was just brushing, too soft and quick and irregular, against his prostate. “Muh, Mike, please, god, _fuck_ \--” 

“Say it, tell me. What do you need?”

“Mnh, your, hah. Your dick, please, I’m ready, I’m so fucking ready, please--”

Mike knew it wasn’t the time to say so, but he wanted to fight every shithead who’d ever so much as implied that this adorable little fucker wasn’t good in bed. He kissed Jay’s forehead and extracted his fingers with care. 

“Gonna fuck you on your back,” Mike said, murmuring this into Jay’s ear while already moving him into position.

Jay stared up at him, nodding, heavy-lidded and breathing with his mouth open. When Mike reached down to tap his knees, Jay lifted his legs up against his chest like they already had a shared, secret sex language. Mike stared down at him and struggled not to call him perfect or gush other, worse things. Jay ran his tongue over his lips, then wiped at the corners with his hand like he was afraid he might be drooling for this already.

“I don’t know if you want to hear this right now,” Mike said, rolling Jay’s stiff nipple between his thumb and forefinger. “But I very literally cannot fathom ever living another day of my life without you.” 

“I know that,” Jay said. He grinned at Mike’s offended look. “What’s that got to do with fucking me-- Oh, jesus, don’t look at me like that. I’m kidding. What the hell have I done with my life except everything you asked me to? You think it’s just for fun? You think I’d be like this for anybody who didn’t feel like the whole motherfucking point of my life as soon as I met him? I know you believe in ghosts and shit because you feel like this about everything, like maybe things are meant to be or there’s some secret mystery behind all the random stuff that happens to people. But I only feel that way about you.” 

Jay was flustered, frowning, holding onto Mike’s arms. He pressed his lips together and exhaled through his nose, searching Mike’s face and trying to determine if he’d made an impression. 

“I don’t feel that way about everything,” Mike said, trying to make his voice sound normal. 

“Well. You know what I mean.”

Mike did. He kissed Jay and reached down between them to guide himself into place. When he pushed inside they both groaned, and Mike held Jay’s swimmy gaze as he sank in deeper, their breaths mixing together in a way that made him think, with some embarrassment, that this was like an episode of Star Trek, like one of those episodes where two beings merged and became something else, and suddenly it was like he was the one who’d never had the right kind of sex before he’d had it with Jay. Because the best part of this was that they could pull apart again after, and still be themselves, but being exactly who they were as two separate people also wouldn’t mean much without the other one close by.

“Holy shit you’re so big,” Jay said when Mike wasn’t even all the way in.

Mike had heard that before but never so gladly. 

“Need me to stop?” Mike asked.

“No, fucking _shit_ , no, feels so good.” 

So Jay had figured out how much Mike liked to hear that things felt good. Mike felt outmatched and didn’t give a shit, was glad. He didn’t last long once he really started fucking into Jay, had spent pretty much the whole night half-hard and wanting it. Something about going off relatively quickly made him feel youthful, and Jay looked proud of himself when Mike blinked his eyes open after coming inside him. Jay came in Mike’s hand while Mike was still in him, and it was a lot, feeling the tight squeezing pulses of Jay’s orgasm just after coming himself, but Mike wanted it, wanted to feel everything and live inside Jay and never leave his bed. 

They stayed there until two o’clock in the afternoon, alternating between sex and napping. They even missed the Packers game, though Mike checked the score on his phone periodically. When they were both too hungry to keep lingering, Mike took a shower and Jay made French toast.

“Jesus,” Mike said when he came up behind Jay at the stove, watching him flip eggy bread slices with the spatula. “You smell like me, like-- That, like me and you fucking.”

“You sound drunk,” Jay said. “Were you chugging my Listerine?”

“I’m not that far gone, Jay. Did you put rum in that, though?”

“Of course, who do you think I am?”

They ate at the table, on Jay’s dark red Christmas-appropriate tablecloth. Jay chattered nervously about his usual shit: the horror fanboy minutia he obsessed over, pieces of his collection that he’d bought or was planning to buy, and the friends he for some reason kept though not seeming to really like any of them, at least according to his complaints. Mike listened at moments and at other moments zoned out and stared at him, lovesick. 

“I can never go back to that bar,” Jay said when Mike was helping him wash up.

“What!” Mike boggled at him. That bar was now the sacred site of precious memories! “Why not?”

“Everyone in the place knew why we went to the men's room together, Mike. I must have-- Maybe I was loud. Or you were. And it’s just too small a place, people saw me walk back there right after you did, and they saw us, you know. Before that. Working up to it.”

“Did they?” Mike shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, you’re oblivious.” 

“You’re paranoid! Anyway, it was your idea. We don’t have to go back if you don’t want to, but so what if people know we fucked? They know me, they know how I do my business, and the bartender could tell that I love you. That kind of attention to detail in a barkeep has value.”

Jay shut the sink off, heat still steaming from the basin. He looked over at Mike and smiled, shrugged. 

“If you’re okay with people knowing I’m your-- Bedmate,” he said. “I guess we could go back.”

“In what universe would I not want everyone in Milwaukee knowing that?”

Jay laughed, but Mike could tell he was happy, not just about what was transpiring currently but the idea that they would be a known thing. 

“Gotta come up with a better word than bedmate,” Mike said when he followed Jay into the living room with some instant hot chocolate. Jay had coffee. They were going to marathon some movies, and Mike was going to let Jay pick what they watched, again. 

“Bedmate’s okay,” Jay said. “But not for public consumption.”

“What would you like me to call you in public, Jay.”

Jay thought about it or maybe ignored the question, kneeling at a drawer near his wall-mounted TV and sifting through his DVD collection for the right thing to watch. 

“Nothing’s good enough,” he said, flicking DVD cases between his fingers.

“Oh, just put _Repo Man_ on, then.”

“No, I meant--” Jay laughed and turned to look at Mike. “For us, like. Terminology. Like I said, all that stuff sounds so dumb out loud. Or just not-- Big enough, or accurate.”

“Fine,” Mike said, waving his hand through the air. “When you marry me for tax purposes we’ll call you my husband. Until then you’ll be, uh. My lifemate. How’s that?”

Jay grinned and shrugged, nodded.

Mike took it as a yes, for both the lifemate thing and the marriage proposal.

**


End file.
